Boulder-based Steve Jenkins, whose cut-paper art won him a Caldecott Honor, has a new book on one of the Earth’s most prolific creatures.

The stats include some that are a little unnerving if skittery six-legged critters give you the creeps.

Even if you don’t much like beetles in real life — hey, I left Florida partly to escape cockroaches big enough to serve as passenger vehicles — it’s impossible to deny that some of them are gorgeous, especially the rose chafer beetle (on the dust jacket, and page 8) and the aptly-named jewel beetle.

Jenkins’ collection of arcane facts is addicting. The plumed antenna of a feather-horn beetle help it detect chemical messages; the spiky golden hairs on the African jewel beetle sense approaching predators.